NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 285
Whatever, then, can be learned from a study of the past, is at once available in the analysis of the present. It becomes an instrument of inquiry, of interpretation, of criticism as regards our present assumptions and aspirations. Thereby it brings their constitution and formation out into the light as far as may be. It eliminates surds, mere survivals, emotional reactions, and rationalizes, so far as that is possible at any given time, the attitudes we take, the ideals we form. Both empiricism and intui- tionalism, though in very different ways, deny the continuity of the moralizing pro- cess. They set up timeless, and hence absolute and disconnected, ultimates ; thereby they sever the problems and movements of the present from the past, rob the past, the sole object of calm, impartial, and genuinely objective study, of all instructing power, and leave our experience to form undirected, at the mercy of circumstance and arbitrariness, whether that of dogmatism or skepticism. To help us see the present situation comprehensively, analytically, to put in our hands a grasp of the factors that have counted, this way or that, in the moralizing of man that is what the historic method does for us. If our moral judgments were just judgments about morality, this might be of scientific worth, but would lack moral significance, moral helpfulness. But moral judgments are judgments of ways to act, of deeds to do, of habits to form, of ends to cultivate. Whatever modifies the judgment, the conviction, the interpretation, the criterion, modifies conduct. To control our judgments of con- duct, our estimates of habit, deed, and purpose, is in so far forth to direct conduct itself. PROFESSOR JOHN DEWEY, "The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality; " II : " Its Significance for Conduct," in Philosophic Review for July, 1902.
R. M.
Interesting Features of German Law. The German civil code is entitled Btirgerliches Gesetzbuch fiir das Dtutsche Reich (" Citizens' Book of Law for the German Empire "). It represents all those provisions of law which regulate the legal status of a person, as a private person, and his relations to others as private persons. To enable the imperial Parliament to enact such a code, an amendment to the constitution was required, which became operative in 1873. In 1874 a committee of five eminent jurists was appointed to report upon the plan and method of prepar- ing a draft of a civil code. Upon the report of this committee, a committee of eleven members was appointed to prepare a draft of the code. The greatest scientists and practitioners were selected for membership. This committee began its work in the latter part of 1874, and drafts of the several parts of the code by the several members of the committee were completed in 1881, when the entire committee continued the work. In 1887 a first draft of a complete code was submitted to the imperial chancellor. This draft was published, and the public invited to contribute criticisms and sugges- tions. These were subsequently published. In 1890 a committee of twenty-two members was appointed, which submitted a second draft of the code to the Council of the empire in 1895. The Council prepared a third draft upon the basis of the first two drafts, and laid this third draft before the imperial Parliament. Parliament enacted the code in August, 1896, to take effect January I, 1900. The new civil code is a victory of the national idea and of the modern spirit. It guarantees the equal rights of all persons. There is no distinction of class. Its great subjects are : property, the family, inheritance.
Other important codes of the German empire are as follows : code of commerce, code of negotiable instruments, the groundbook code, the code of bankruptcy, code relating to the constitution of courts, code of civil procedure, code of voluntary juris- diction, penal code, code of criminal procedure. The body of private law and remedial justice of Germany is, with slight exceptions, incorporated in codes for the entire empire.
The doctrine of stare decisis does not prevail in Germany. As a consequence, the law contained in the 2,385 sections of the civil code will not be enlarged by volumes of decisions construing the several sections, having the sanction and force of law. If the lowest court in Germany differs on a question of law from the decision of the imperial court, it is its duty to follow its own conviction. The German jurist is not and cannot be a case lawyer. He receives special training to interpret the various sections of his codes upon general principles of law. The imperial court at Leipzig, the Reichsgerichl, is the highest appellate court in Germany. In publishing
